


ru(m)ination

by glycerineclown



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Crying, Cunnilingus, F/M, Frank is overwhelmed and his dick needs to get with the goddamn program, Masturbation, Touch-Starved, even more post-Punisher fic from yours truly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 22:42:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13258125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glycerineclown/pseuds/glycerineclown
Summary: Frank hasn’t used his dick to make choices in a very, very long time. In fact, he hasn’t really used it at all.He might need some assistance.





	ru(m)ination

It’s been more than two years since Frank has had sex.

He remembers the last time well, has recounted it in his head many times since. It was before his last tour, when he and Maria had a scant few hours left, and the kids were asleep.  

He hasn’t been bored enough to be horny in months. Sure, he used to rub one out once in a while on deployment, but there often wasn’t the privacy or the inspiration for it.

In Afghanistan, his brain was busy with war, and then with missions that didn’t feel like war at all, just murder. His brain was busy with the blood of his wife and children when he got back. It was busy with eviscerating the gangs in the months afterward. He was always evading, or planning, or running, or killing. Cleaning his guns or using them. Grunting through pain and waking limp from nightmares. Any personal care that wasn’t absolutely vital to the mission fell to the wayside.

His sexual life had been wrapped up in Maria for so long—and she was always apart from him, he was always across the world from her. Lisa and Frank Jr. took up a lot of their attention when he was home. They might have had a date night or three when he was on leave, and she’d always saved up a lot of that energy for him, but he needed to be a dad too.

It doesn’t feel strange to go without.

He’s not blind—Karen’s objectively, classically beautiful, she’s been beautiful to him since he first met her, but there was no time or place to consider her, and he didn’t want to then, anyway. He had no business beyond killing everyone responsible for the deaths of his wife and children.

She was just good, whip-smart, and didn’t take any shit from him. She was someone he should protect at all costs—he would give himself that mission.

He had grown to care about her deeply, he had no choice in the matter, but it didn’t even cross his mind to _want_ her for a long time.

Karen Page believed in him, challenged him, made him look at himself like no one else had before—he would follow her to the ends of the Earth, but she deserved far more than he could offer her.

It wasn’t an option. She wasn’t, and he wasn’t.

Sarah Lieberman was always David’s wife, always objectively off-limits and someone who would be rightfully terrified to know the truth of him. He had played the good listener and father figure as long as it got him close enough. Inserted himself into her life for a while.

He should have seen her coming, really, but he didn’t. His body had kissed back, for a second, on instinct—but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t what he wanted. 

He went back to the basement that night with food for a very drunk and helplessly insecure David. Frank didn’t know how to say to him that he hadn’t used his dick to make choices in a very, very long time.

Every piece of his body made the decision to save Karen. All of them at once, as a unit. There was no discussion, his body just did it, took every bullet and kept going.

When he stood across from her in that elevator, barely upright, his body all kinds of fucked up, he could have kissed her. He could have closed the distance. His eyes had flickered down to her mouth, and she had done the same, leaned in for it before he tipped his forehead to hers.

They were exhausted, but alive, and alone, sequestered—and he didn’t want to leave her, but there was too much to do, and the building was chock-full of cops that would shoot him on sight. 

Frank breathed with her instead, for moments that were over too quickly. She pulled back, nodded to him, told him to go.

Karen was safe, and that was all that mattered right then. He had to get to the roof.

 

He doesn’t have time to even think about that moment again until after the carousel, after he’s been stitched up in six or seven places and hooked to an IV, and they’ve dimmed the lights for the night.

He’s handcuffed to the handrail on the hospital bed, and there are guards stationed outside his room. It’s not unlike the way he looked when they first met.

If he closes his eyes, he can picture Karen, seated in a folding chair, a few feet away. He’d call her and check in, but he’s being monitored closely.

There are always multiple Homeland agents in the room when the nurses come in to tend to him. It’s nice to let someone else take care of his injuries, he’s been patching himself up in the dark for so long, but he can tell that the agents’ presence stresses the nurses out.

One of the nurses, a Puerto Rican woman named Vanessa, looks him right in the eye on the second day and asks if she has anything to worry about from him.

“No, ma’am,” Frank says, and Vanessa turns, points her finger at the door.

“Get out, please,” she says to the agents. “This man isn’t going anywhere.”

Her tone doesn’t do any good—they have orders—but Frank appreciates the sentiment. The agents sigh and back into a corner in some semblance of a compromise, but won’t leave the room.

On the third day, it’s Thanksgiving. Rafael Hernandez and the Deputy Director of the CIA give him a substantial amount of cash, and new fake IDs. He’s on some heavy-duty painkillers that he’ll have to be careful with. David brings some clothes to the hospital for him, and Frank walks out of the building without help.

The van is waiting. David’s packed up, he’s moving home—he had packed Frank’s things from the basement for him as well.

Frank drops him at home in time for a turkey dinner, and drives away before David can get to the front door. He heads for the church, and hopes Curtis won’t ask them to go around the circle and say what they’re thankful for this year.

It’s a good session. They listen to him, don’t ask too many questions. Russo’s in a coma, and everyone else is dead—and now he’s supposed to just keep living. To stop fighting, and move forward on his own. As if a normal life, the things he had always wanted for his family, could ever be possible for him.  

He looks around his shithole apartment that night and knows he has to move out of it. He can afford something much better this place now, anyway. He packs his duffel with everything else he owns, the few little things he’s collected in this apartment, aside from his toiletries. If all else fails, he can sleep in the truck. But he doesn’t leave, doesn’t do anything else.

He thinks again about the elevator, about Karen, about what might be possible for him now. If he could make her happy.

He wonders idly if his dick even works.

In the shower that night, Frank’s hand wraps around himself for half a second before realizing he’s not supposed to let his stitches get too wet.

He tries again in bed, with his eyes closed, tries to conjure up general images—thinking about Maria won’t do him any good here, no matter how many truly good times they had—and then there’s a flash of blonde hair, and a pencil skirt.

Karen Page, walking toward him. She takes his chin in her hand, kisses him. Wraps her fingers around his cock and pulls, just the way he likes it. He’d feel bad about thinking of her this way but he just can’t help it, not when all he wants to do is go to her.

She’s between his knees on the bed after that, her hair pulled over one shoulder. She drags her tongue up the length of his cock, sucks the head into her mouth.

He’s starting to firm up. This is a nice fantasy, but his hand is too dry.

Frank gets up, finds some lotion in the bathroom, and returns to the bed.

It’s a solid improvement. Karen’s mounting him now, she’s naked, sinking down on his cock, grinding her hips against him. Her hands are warm, pressing down on his chest, holding him to the bed.

It’s so deliciously warm and tight inside her—there’s no condom and it doesn’t matter, she wants to milk it from him. His hips rise off the bed to meet her, and it’s not going to take much, he can tell already. He’s stiff as a board, his balls are pulling up.

Frank slides one hand into his hair, and tugs on it. She’s taking what she wants from him, riding him hard, her head thrown back, her hair obscuring her face. She’s saying his name, breathy and strained.

He comes inside her with a long groan, feels his load shoot up hot over his chest.

Frank keeps his eyes closed for a long while afterward, thinks about getting up for a rag. He wakes up, cold and sticky, an hour or so later.

His dick still works.

 

On Black Friday, Frank calls Karen, and asks her to meet him by the waterfront again.

He’s seated on one of the benches when she arrives, and he stands, melts into her arms when she embraces him, even though his ribs protest. Karen pulls back to look over his face, brings a hand up to where the bullet had grazed the side of his head.

“You’re all right?” she asks, and he nods into her touch.

“Not dead yet.”

It’s cold out, clouds of steam coming from their mouths. There’s no reason to not just go sit in his truck with the heater running, so they walk back up to the street, where he had parked. Frank opens the passenger door, and she smiles in surprise, but lets him help her up into the seat and close the door behind her.

He walks around and gets into the driver’s seat, and puts the keys in the ignition, turns on the heater.

Frank sighs then, looking out the windshield. “I want to tell you everything. I guess I… just wanna talk it out. I need some perspective.”

Karen nods in his periphery. “Sure. You’re always off the record with me.”

He tells her everything that’s happened, all about Billy Russo, and Cerberus, and Rawlins, and Gunner. About Madani and Homeland and the depositions.

Telling her isn’t like telling David. He doesn’t feel like he has to convince Karen of anything, or like she’ll judge him, even though he knows in his bones that no one’s opinion matters to him more than hers.

By the time he gets to Curtis and the group sessions, his throat hurts, his vision’s blurred with tears, and Karen’s wiping her eyes next to him.

“Do you really think it’s over?” she asks.

“Yeah, I do,” Frank says, and scrubs a hand over his face. “I, uh, I don’t really know what to do now. Guess I didn’t plan on surviving, y’know?”

Karen nods, and pulls a bottle of water from her bag. She offers it to him after she takes a swig, and he takes it, downs a third of it. He places it in the cupholder between them, and rests his left hand on the steering wheel.

“What do you want?” Karen asks.

He doesn’t know what good beating around the bush would do. She either wants him too or she doesn’t.

“Forgive me if I’m off-base here, but I—” Frank cuts himself off, and sighs, rubbing his thumb over the stitching on the steering wheel, weighing his words. “I would have kissed you, in the elevator.”

He looks over at her. Karen’s making a face like she’s repeating his words to herself in her head, and then her lips curl into a smile. “I wanted you to.”

“Yeah?” he asks, soft.

Karen grins wide. “Yeah,” she says, and nods. “You wanna try again?”

“Okay,” Frank says. He leans over the center console, lifts a hand to her cheek, and slots his mouth over hers.

 

An hour later, she’s unlocking the door to her apartment. Frank’s carrying dinner, and the nervous energy in his stomach is confusing his hunger.

Karen’s laughing, taking her shoes off, throwing her bag down by the door.

She takes the food from his hands and puts it on the counter, before pulling him into another kiss. Her arms come up around his neck, and he backs her into the cabinets, his hands sneaking under the hem of her top to touch the soft skin at her hips.

“We can always reheat it,” she says, when his mouth finds her neck.

Frank groans. “Thank god.”

She leads him into her bedroom. It’s a bit messy, the bed’s unmade, but that just makes it easier for her to sweep the duvet to the floor and climb onto the sheets.

Frank sits down to take his boots off, and she’s on him in a second, kneeling behind him, tugging on his jacket.

“Whoa, easy,” he says with a grin, and Karen leans up to kiss his neck and whisper apologies, and goes slower with Frank’s jacket until it’s off.

After both of his boots have tumbled to the floor, she tugs him gently to the center of the bed, and molds herself to his side as he kisses her. Frank groans into her mouth, sliding a hand around the back of her neck.

Her skin is so hot to the touch—it’s like he’s been cold for months, and Karen opens for him, licks at him with a smile as she reaches for his Henley.

“You’re gonna see some things,” Frank warns, wincing as he sits up and pulls his shirt over his head.

She gasps as she takes in his skin, piece by piece, her fingers ghosting over his shoulders when he lays down again. “Oh no, Frank. Jesus Christ.”

He lowers his fly and strips out of his pants next, and turns to her. “I know, I look like shit,” he says, and throws his pants off the bed.

Karen shakes her head though, presses kisses over his face. He just smiles and lets her, tugs one of her legs over his hip, and kisses her back.

His cock hardly twitches when she rubs him, though.

He shoves her top up to her armpits and presses his face into her chest instead, moves his hips out of range from her hands, laves his tongue over her skin, shoves one cup of her bra down to suck on the nipple beneath it. Listens to her hum and feels her body arch toward him, her hands holding his head against her.

Frank undoes her fly and tugs her black jeans and long underwear down over her hips—it’s a federal holiday, and bitter cold out.

“Can I eat your pussy,” he says, after her pants have been shoved down to one ankle and she’s kicked them off.

“Yes, please.”

Frank looks up at her with a smile, and presses his face between her legs, into the cotton of her panties, and inhales deep. She smells heady, salty and familiar in the back of his mind somewhere, and she’s already damp.

Karen pulls her top over her head, and tosses her bra off the bed, and then her fingers are scraping through his hair, and she’s gasping as he licks a stripe up her vulva through the cotton.

Frank tucks his fingers under the waistband of her panties, digs deeper with his tongue until she moans.

“Take them off,” she says, and he does.

He leans on an elbow to part her soft curls with his fingers, and dives back into her with his mouth, but his legs are hanging off the bed. Frank finds her clit with some guidance from Karen, and then pulls back, uses his hands to tip Karen onto her side.

She’s frowning for a second, until she catches on, lifts one leg so he can use her thigh as a pillow and curl the rest of his body around her. When her other leg comes down over Frank’s ear, he strokes her thigh with his fingers, scrapes blunt fingernails up it gently, and then brings his fingers around to her entrance, brings his tongue to her clit again.

Karen lets out a thready whine when he slides a finger up inside her. She’s slippery for him, and he closes his eyes, focuses his tongue on her clit, curls his finger as he thrusts it inside her.

He ignores the wet sound their skins make, just keeps tapping her clit with the tip of his tongue.

“Oh, my god,” she sighs. “Fuck, Frank, you’re good.”

Grinning into her pussy, Frank looks up. “You like that, sweetheart?”

Karen nods, slides a hand around the back of his head, and holds him where she wants him. He adds a second finger after a minute or two, thrusts them in time with his tongue until her legs start shaking around him.

Frank laughs, presses her thighs apart until she falls onto her back again, repositions himself on the bed, and dives back into her, one of her knees bent over his shoulder. He knows he’s doing a good job, she’s fucking drenched, dripping down his hand, spread all over his lips and nose.

Frank humps the mattress a little, but he’s only halfway to hard.

“Just like that,” Karen says, and he keeps it up, even though his tongue is starting to hurt. “Don’t stop, I’m gonna—”

Karen makes a choking sound and grinds her hips against his face, and he rolls with her movements, laps at her until she cries out, until she’s pulsating around his fingers and gasping.

A surge of pride envelops him then—his tongue still works too, and as he slows his fingers and pulls them out of her, he sucks them into his mouth to taste her some more, but when he looks up, Karen hasn’t seen. She’s gazing up at the ceiling.

She laughs a little as she comes down, and Frank smiles up at her and wipes his mouth, kisses the inside of her thigh before resting his head against it.

“You hungry?” he asks.

Karen’s still panting. “I think if I get up now, I’ll fall down.”

Frank snorts at her as he sits up on his knees between her legs, and Karen pulls him down for a kiss. He goes willingly, moving up the bed to lay beside her, and rubs his wet face over her cheek.

She’s beaming when Frank pulls back from her kiss, a satisfied look on her face that he wants to make permanent.

“You’re still wearing these,” she says, dipping her pointer finger into the waistband of his boxers.

Karen tugs them down until Frank kicks them to the bottom of the bed, and he watches her face as she appraises his cock. It’s flagging a little, not halfway there anymore, just awake.

He wraps his hand around himself, stroking softly, before reaching between her legs to wet his fingers. She’s swollen and overwarm still, flushed red, and Frank spends longer than he needs to stroking her, before he fists his cock again.

Karen swipes her tongue over her lips and lifts a hand to join his.

“I don’t think I have any condoms,” she says, forming a tight ring with her thumb and forefinger for the head of his cock to push through, but he’s still too soft for it. “If I do, they’re expired.”

“I’m, uh—” Frank starts. “Sorry, I really haven’t done this in a while.”

Frank frowns down at himself, and Karen shakes her head, pulling his hand away, drawing it up to her chest.

“Kiss me,” she says, and he does, squeezing her, flicking his fingertips over her nipple.

Karen rolls onto her back, bringing Frank down over her, and he slides a thigh between her legs, switches his hand to attend to her other breast as he kisses across Karen’s cheek, down to her neck.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he breathes at her, in some attempt at an apology, to say that it’s not her fault. “Taste so good.”

He grinds into her hip a little, and that feels good, but it’s not enough—he doesn’t know if it’ll happen tonight. He’s frazzled and out of practice, even if he had succeeded in making her come without much trouble.

His dick’s out of whack.

“Don’t stress about it, that won’t help,” she says, soft, and pushes at his shoulder until Frank rolls onto his back again.

He watches Karen get up on her hands and knees, and crawl between his legs. She kisses around the bullet hole on his thigh, and gets down on her elbows, and takes his cock in her hands.

“Oh, Karen, you—” he starts, but she just shushes him, slides his dick into her warm mouth and sucks. “Jesus fuck,” he exhales.

Her eyes are closed, her blonde hair falling forward to frame her face, and he brings his hands down to hold her hair back as she cranes her neck a little, takes him deeper.

When Karen pulls back to lave her tongue over the head, he’s standing straight up above her fist. She smiles up at him, traces a vein up his cock with her tongue before sucking the tip back into her mouth.

She lets him bump the back of her throat after that, swallows around him. Karen’s eyes slide shut again, but not so much like she’s concentrating, not like it’s work, but like this feels good to her, like having him in her mouth is a welcome respite, like she could do it all day.

After a minute or two, Frank has to tear his eyes away—watching himself disappear into her mouth is too much, but his fingers stay in her hair, alternating between gently guiding and feeling her movements, and curling his fingers into loose fists.

She gets sloppier as his hips begin rocking up to meet her—he didn’t consciously start doing it, but she holds still to let Frank thrust into her mouth, one hand wrapped around the base of his cock to control how deep he goes.

He’s getting close.

“Karen, I’m—where can I come, I’m close—” he says, breath ragged.

She answers without words, her mouth replaced with quick strokes of her hand, and he comes in thick white ropes over her fingers and up his own abdomen.

Karen’s hand slows as his whole body goes limp, and when Frank blinks up at her, she smiles.

“You hungry?” she asks, and Frank laughs, and nods.

She crawls across the bed for one last kiss, and then gets up, a little wobbly, and leaves the room. She comes back with a rag, and while Frank scrubs most of the cum off of himself, she pulls her hair up into a bun.

“Come take a shower with me, and then we can eat,” she says. Karen picks up her clothes from the floor, and tugs on Frank’s big toe from where she’s standing at the foot of the bed.

Frank sits up with a groan, and follows her, rag in hand, naked and barefoot in her apartment, his brain still a little fuzzy and floaty from coming. He can still smell her on his face.

“Karen,” he says, in the doorway to the bathroom. “We had sex.”

She looks to him from where she was about to turn on the shower, but she doesn’t make a face at his statement, just nods. “Yeah, we did, Frank.”

He approaches her, tosses the rag into the sink, and uses his cleanest hand to trail a finger up her body.

“That was real,” he says, more to himself than to her.

Karen nods again, and turns on the water, before dragging the curtain closed. She faces Frank then, and lifts both hands to his face, pulls him into a soft kiss. “You haven’t had anything good for a while, have you?”

He shakes his head, kisses one of her palms.

The water’s beginning to steam. Karen closes the door to her bathroom, and herds him into the shower without a word. She lathers her hands with body wash and bathes him, careful around his wounds, her eyes taking him in again, like she’s counting the stitches.

He doesn’t deserve this, and she’s so good. She touches him like he isn’t a ruthless piece of shit, like he’s not completely floundering across from her, aching for human touch that doesn’t have the goal of killing him.

He doesn’t know how to respond to her. He knows he should lather his hands up too, hide some groping with cleanliness, but he can’t move.

Frank hangs his head after a minute or two, and chokes out a sob, brings a hand up to cover his face.

“Whoa, Frank, hey, look at me.” She touches his face again until he meets her eyes. The water can’t disguise the fact that he’s losing his grip. Karen turns it off, and wraps her arms around his shoulders. “Hey, you’re okay,” she says. “You’re alright.”

He presses his face into her neck and cries until they’re on the floor of the tub.

 

They divide up most of the food some twenty minutes later, and Frank watches Karen’s plate spin in the microwave as she pours two glasses of water.

His whole body feels heavy, like he’s wearing weights.

Karen appears at his side, one hand on her hip. She’s wearing his Henley, with the sleeves pulled up around her elbows.

“Was the sex that bad, Frank?”

His eyes jerk to her face, but she’s holding back a churlish grin—she’s fucking with him. He bursts out with a short laugh, slings an arm around her neck. Karen tucks herself against him, wraps her arms around his waist.

“It was good,” he says, nodding against her forehead. “I’m just—I don’t know what’s going on right now.”

The timer on the microwave goes off, and Frank turns, takes Karen’s plate out and sets it on the counter, before swapping in his own to heat up.

He faces her again, kisses her hair, rubs his thumb over her shoulder. “I’m a fucking mess,” he says on a sigh. “I’m sorry to make you deal with all this.”

Karen smiles, though. “I think it’s healthy, Frank. Feel what you’re feeling.”

He feels one side of his mouth quirk up. “You’d like Curtis.”

“If he wants the best for you, then I bet I would.”

Frank chuckles, and nods. “Yeah.”

Karen ducks out from under his arm to open a drawer, and pulls out forks and knives. “Maybe you just need to think about everything one thing at a time,” she says. “Break it down.”

“Like what?”

Karen shrugs as she sets places for them at the kitchen island. “Dinner. Sleep. Make out with Karen. Don’t kill people.”

“Sounds like the basics right there.”

“I think so.”

Frank turns back to the microwave, and opens the door before it can beep.

Make out with Karen.

His dick can get behind that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com), as always. This fic is rebloggable [here](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com/post/169277749833/rumination-frankkaren-post-punisher-4574), if you're so inclined!


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